Yesterday, I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

Today I do.

This country has got to change its mind about guns.

I grew up around guns and among hunters. I learned to shoot squirrels at ten. I took pistol marksmanship for my college PE course. I own a handgun (in a lockbox with a hidden key) and I live in a house with a gun safe (double locked). We should be able to own guns for hunting and for target shooting. These are pursuits that normal human beings enjoy.

No civilian in this country needs to own an assault weapon. Or anything semi-automatic that can be modified to make it more suitable for mass shooting.

No one under twenty-one needs to own a gun, period. For crying out loud, people, we don’t even let them DRINK.

I’m sick of this all-or-nothing rhetoric that afflicts American discourse. If we’re talking about the causes of the civil war or Donald Trump, it’s one thing. We may butt heads but no one dies.

This is different.

I’m sure some of you will post the same old tired stuff in response, so let me pre-empt.

I’m not interested in posts explaining that banning assault weapons and banning or strictly regulating the ownership of semi-automatics is against the Constitution. The Founding Fathers had no vision of the toll in innocent lives that these weapons enable.

I’m not interested in hearing that if X type of weapon is banned, only criminals will own X type of weapon. Yup. That’s the idea. And when we find the criminals with the guns, they go to jail.

I’m not interested in hearing that good people with guns prevent murders by bad people with guns. Tell that to the teachers in Brouward County. Tell that to the teachers at Sandy Hook.

I’m not interested in hearing that we need other kinds of solutions, more mental health services, etc. That’s not the problem. See the link below: Americans commit more mass shootings than other nationalities. Americans get better mental health care than most nationalities. Americans own far more guns than other nationalities. These are numbers, people. CLICK THE LINK, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS.

AND I’m not interested in hearing that people who are determined to get these weapons will do so anyway. CLICK THE LINK, LOOK AT THE NUMBERS.

I’m not interested in hearing how glad you are that you home school because your children are safe now—as if the problem here is the classroom. Your children are not safe. They are not safe at a movie theater, they are not safe in their college dining hall, they are not safe at the grocery store, they are not safe at a concert, they are not safe at church.

They are not safe, and we refuse to act.

Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.

What Explains U.S. Mass Shootings? International Comparisons Suggest an Answer